Boys Grow In The Trees
by mayaswellbeclever
Summary: A/U. This is the story of Finn, Kurt, Artie, Blaine, Puck, and Karofsky: best friends from age six. This story follows them as they grow up, some apart and some inseparably intwined.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Hi there! I'm Mayaswellbeclever (which comes from the fantastic David Sedaris essay _Me Talk Pretty One Day_, and the direct quote is something like, "If you can't be cute, you may as well be clever." I very much live by this.) You can call me May, I suppose, if you want to call me at all :)**

**Alright, this is my first stab in the world of _Glee_ fanfiction, but I've been reading for awhile (Dalton, Welcome to Hogwarts; you know, the prerequisites) and am utterly taken with this fandom. I've dabbled mostly in _Harry Potter_ and _The Office _fandoms and fic-worlds...I suppose with the last of HP movies and Steve Carell gone, I should start broadening my horizons. **

**Anyway, this story is set to be multi-chaptered, and I've got it all plotted out, so no worries. The title comes from the Tori Amos song, "Boys in Trees," which I found devastatingly relevant. I'll try to update as much as possible! The premise is quite simple: it follows our _Glee_ boys, focusing mostly on Kurt, Finn, Puck, Blaine, Artie, and Karofsky for now. Mike and Sam will appear soon, have no fear! ****Being a fan of surprises, I've chosen to leave you guys hanging on the pairing outcomes. Because I'm a sadistic tease. I will divulge that the tree house is a rather important character in itself.**

**Please enjoy and leave a review if you feel the need. I admit karma won't be lending me any favors in that department; I joined not so long ago (read: three days) and am terrible about reviewing. I promise to gush if you do? Kidding, kidding. I like honesty. **

**This has been sufficiently long-winded, so.**

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><p><em><span>Boys Grow In The Trees<span>_

As worn as the phrasing seems, they'd really all just _clicked. _And their friendship wasn't perfect but it was woven tight and pulled taut, and perhaps there was some minor fraying but it was sturdy and seamless. This is the story of their friendship, from the beginning to the end. This is how it happened, and it's all the work of the Hummel residence.

It was an impromptu neighborhood get-together; a sudden block party, on the fourth of July 1999. _This is all it took._

If you want to get all _Butterfly Effect_ about it, it was the drought that did it. Enter a dusty kind of scorching to that particular summer and you're sure to find six-year-old Kurt Hummel pouncing around the front lawn through the sprinklers, which, if we're being honest, the city had asked everyone not to do, but it was hot and a holiday and they were going to cookout, goddammit, and if his kid was hot and wanted to cool off, Burt Hummel was 'gonna slather him in sun block and turn on the Crazy Daisy, god_dammit_. And Elizabeth Hummel, whose animated hand gestures and upward stretch of rose lips over straight teeth could beckon even the haughtiest of noses down to earth. Burt, with his new grill and enthusiasm for America, probably didn't send anyone running for the hills, either.

Even the most reclusive and bitter of neighbors couldn't help but turn their heads from the air conditioning vent to peer out their window at the postcard perfection outside their window; Dad grilling, Mom chatting with a stray dog walker, freckly kid flapping around the yard in mixed-Marvel swim trunks. Even the most Dickinson of neighbors couldn't deny Elizabeth Hummel's invitation to join her family for an impromptu cookout; not when she cocked her head and offered a sparkly grin, a comfortable thumb thrust behind her to gesture at her boys.

And so they came, all of the families on the block, mothers grasping the hands of their squirming children and calling for their husbands to bring some ketchup and extra sparklers. It turned into a rather pleasant discovery, actually. Six of the women had sons, all entering the first grade. (And thus six women could commiserate on having _just_ lost the last of the baby weight). Six of the women patted their six year old sons on the head and patted them forward twinkling, _"Go play with the other boys, honey."_

After each was given a hot-dog-with-everything, Kurt Hummel stuck his hand out to each of them in proper introduction.

"Want to see my tree house?" he asked hopefully, his sky blue eyes bright and clear. The other boys nodded at each other in shrugging agreement, and were led to the back of the house to a long ladder that stretched up all the way up high to the roof. A newly built tree house was perched, level with brick red shingles. Kurt flung himself up the ladder, and beckoned the others to do the same.

"This is _so awesome_." Finny Hudson breathed, his loping limbs stretching through the open entryway. Kurt thanked him with a silly grin, grunting as he pulled up the next boy, Blaine Anderson, who flicked his curls from his sweaty forehead with a long, close-lipped smile, moving to sit Indian style next to Kurt.

"Yeah this place is da bomb, Hummel," Artie Abrams sing-songed, flinging a leg over the last rung. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a finger as he absent-mindedly nodded in appreciation.

"It's mega rad you got this," Noah Puckerman agreed, crouched precariously on the edge of the entry, his fingers gripping the inside of the frame. He launched himself inside with a yelp as the final head bobbed into view: a bewildered Davie Karofsky, who swung himself in one leg at a time. Davie mumbled his approval around a bite of hot dog, causing the boys to dissolve into laughter as he offered Kurt double thumbs up.

From that day on, the six boys were inseparable. They couldn't _all_ hang out at the same time, but rarely was one boy found alone. Finny and Noah were often tossing a football or playing with Nerf guns in Finny's lawn, and Kurt joined them occasionally, if he wasn't watching cartoons with Davie or trading Pokémon cards with Artie. Sometimes Noah and Davie raced bikes down to the park, and Blaine and Artie played on the same recreational soccer team. Artie and Davie both had dads who liked fishing, and spent a few Saturdays down at the lake together. Kurt and Blaine were notorious for spending all day at the park or watching movies, and joined Finny on rainy days for Mario Kart tournaments. But Sunday nights, no matter rain or full moon, were sacred.

Sundays found the boys unrolling their respective sleeping bags on the floor of the Hummel tree house, exchanging comics and baseball cards, showing off new scars and demolishing packs of Kool-Aid Jammers, Barbeque Lays, and fun sized Snickers.

It was the first summer of many, the first Sundays of hundreds, the first arm-punches of a thousand.

It was the summer that started it all.

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><p><strong>AN: Chapter one down! I really hope you enjoyed/are eager for more? Let me knowww :) x May**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

**A/N: Guys. _Guys_. I am so sorry. This has taken literally forever to come back to; I just have been so busy with applications and all of everything that I've had no time to finish writing anything. **

**Some of you were curious about pairings. If this last scene doesn't give away my biggest OTP, well…**

**As for the other pairings: that's soon to come! In all seriousness I'm mostly tempted to stay true to canon in terms of who-dates-who, but the _when_ is up in the air.**

**Anyway, here's Chapter 2. I hope you enjoy and are still interested in this story! Leave feedback as always if you're so inclined. Sorry this A/N was so lengthly. _Again_. x May**

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><p><p>

"Hey! You're super early!" Finny Hudson cried as he rolled himself into the Hummel tree house, tub of cheese balls and liter of Mountain Dew under his arm.

"Duh," replied Noah Puckerman, snatching the cheese balls from Finny's sweaty grip, "my mom said it's s'posed to rain an' I don't wanna sleep nexta'-," he grunted as he palmed the oversized lid and twisted the tub top off—"the _window_."

Finny nodded, grabbing two clear plastic cups from the sleeve Kurt kept in the corner of the house and poured some of the electric yellow soda in each.

"So didn't you see your big sister yesterday?" Finny asked tossing a cheese ball into his mouth and wiping his fingers on his shorts.

"It was okay, I guess. She's at college mostly, so I don't really see her 'cept for summers, but she gotta job or something." Noah had an old _Spiderman_ comic balanced on his knees, one hand flicking through and the other wrist-deep in the Cheetos.

"Oh, awesome," Finny nodded, eyeing the magazine Noah was flicking through rather quickly. "Are you readin' that?" he wondered. Noah shook his head but didn't glance up, fingers dancing inside the cheeto tub.

"Naw, just lookin' at the pictures. Hey, did Kurty or any of the other guys say when…?"

"Noah! You're just sticking your _whole hand_ in there?" whined a voice from the doorway. Noah swiftly pulled his hand from the tub, a fistful of puffs crunched in his knobby knuckles. Kurt rolled his eyes and blew a lock of sweaty brown hair away from his forehead as he pulled himself in. He was closely followed by a dark brown mound of curls, tumbling around each other, as Blaine's head came into view from the entryway.

"Whoa, you guys are already here?" he grinned, swinging in eagerly.

"We were just waiting for you guys." Finny said sheepishly, but Kurt waved him off.

"It's fine. But, hey, when are the rest gonna get here? Davie said he was bringing his brother's port'ble DVD player and Blaine brought _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_. Blaine pulled the DVD from his inside his sweatshirt, waving it proudly.

"Soon, I'll bet." Noah sighed, tossing the comic back into the corner. "Now let's unroll our sleeping bags. And I call dibs on the middle, 'cause my mom said it's 'sposed to rain."

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><p>It was much later when the boys had gotten around to watching the movie. Noah, Finny, and Davie had forged their way through ninety percent of the snacks already, and were begging for more through mouthfuls. Kurt and Artie had played action figures for awhile (<em>"Those are dolls!" Davie had joked weakly, until Artie punched him and Kurty launched a Twix at his friend's face)<em>, and Blaine was trying to teach them how to play Texas Hold 'Em (_"My daddy always plays it when his friends come over, and I think it's real funny cause they end up laughin' pretty loud by the end, when my mommy tells them all to go home for dinner."_) It was, in every sense, a classic Sunday summer night in Lima.

During the school year, their weekends became more hectic. With play-dates, first-grade science fairs, and birthday parties, it was difficult to find a happy balance. But they were _best friends_, and God help them if they didn't find a way to exercise old habits.

Whether Friday or Saturday night, the boys planned their weekends around whether or not they could come to the Hummel's tree house. Sometimes they were one or three friends short; sometimes they slept in Kurt's tree house when Kurt wasn't even there. Once, over spring break, the Hummel's went to Disney World for four days with the Karofsky's; the other boys slept in the tree house two nights.

It was not so much a clique or a club, either; plenty of other kids in their class had heard of the tree house and become friends with members of the group. Rarely, though, did any seem to mesh well with _all_ of them. In a brotherhood, they concurred, everyone is friends with _everyone_. Davie and Jimmy Azimio both sat in the back of math together and laughed at their teacher's expense, but he didn't necessarily get invited to any of the sleepovers. Jacob Ben Israel went to the same temple at the Puckerman's, and he and Noah had talked about their mutual appreciation of _Real Monsters_, but he'd never set foot on the Hummel's lawn. Blainey talked about David and Wes, the cool, slightly older sons of his parent's friends, but he'd seen them outside a visit to one of their houses. Kurty and Artie had started to even befriend some of the girls in their class, particularly a chatty African American girl named Mercedes and her best friend Santana, but they _definitely_ didn't invite _girls_ to their sleepovers (Kurt's Daddy wouldn't have even _entertained _such a thought.)

"Unless they like everyone in the tree house, they can't be in the tree house." Artie declared (Kurt wanted to make a sign, but Noah insisted it remain "an unwritten rule".)

Even the boys' parents realized the bond their sons had maintained. It's true the transition to grade school often brought new friendships, but the accountability the boys had in their friendships was something truly astounding. It made their parents closer, too: Mrs. Hummel or Puckerman often took a few of the boys around town to practices and grandma's houses; even when their own sons weren't involved. Truly it was something beautiful; Elizabeth Hummel barely minded climbing the ladder to Febreeze the tree house on Sunday mornings.

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><p>"I think I wanna be an astronaut," Blainey breathes, flat-backed on the Hummel's lawn, eyes trained on the cloudless sky.<p>

"You should. I'll go with you," Kurty is sitting Indian-style near him, ripping up blades of grass mindlessly. "We can go to the moon."

Blainey nodded eagerly, and then shot up. "Did you heart Jamie Azimio in Science yesterday? He really asked Miss Justine if it was made out of _cheese_!"

"I know!" Kurt rolled his eyes, throwing a fistful of grass behind him. "He's such a dummy. I don't know why Davie is friends with him."

"Me either," Blaine sighs, lying back down. He glances at Kurt and back to the sky, "he totally isn't coming to the moon with us."

"Definitely _not_."

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><p><strong>AN: Yay! Klainebow Connection.**

**But yeah, Klaine. Apologies to all you Puckurts and Kinners and Kummers, but, _no_. Review if you so choooooooooooooose, I'd be forever obliged. **

**Next up: _Angst_.**


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